Unintentional Weight Loss
Unintentional weight loss occurs in many diseases and conditions, including some very serious diseases such as cancer, AIDS, and a variety of other diseases.
Poor management of type 1 diabetes mellitus, also known as insulin-dependent diabetes mellitus (IDDM), leads to an excessive amount of glucose and an insufficient amount of insulin in the bloodstream. This triggers the release of triglycerides from adipose (fat) tissue and catabolism (breakdown) of amino acids in muscle tissue. This results in a loss of both fat and lean mass, leading to a significant reduction in total body weight. Untreated type 1 diabetes mellitus can produce weight loss. In addition to weight loss due to a reduction in fat and lean mass, fluid loss can be triggered by illnesses such as diabetes, certain medications, lack of fluid intake or other factors. Fluid loss in addition to reduction in fat and lean mass exacerbates the risk for cachexia.
Infections such as HIV may alter metabolism, leading to weight loss.
Hormonal disruptions, such as an overactive thyroid (hyperthyroidism), may also exhibit as weight loss.
One cutoff value of where unintentional weight loss is of significant concern is where there's a weight loss of more than 5% in the past month, or at least 10% during the last 6 months.
Read more about this topic: Weight Loss
Famous quotes containing the words weight and/or loss:
“I falter where I firmly trod,
And falling with my weight of cares
Upon the great world’s altar-stairs
That slope thro’ darkness up to God,”
—Alfred Tennyson (1809–1892)
“California is a place in which a boom mentality and a sense of Chekhovian loss meet in uneasy suspension; in which the mind is troubled by some buried but ineradicable suspicion that things had better work here, because here, beneath that immense bleached sky, is where we run out of continent.”
—Joan Didion (b. 1935)